Monday, July 13, 2015

I didn’t even realize that you could buy a website until the
beginning of this year. I found out about it from a interview on a podcast by
SmartPassiveIncome.com. Pat Flynn interviewed Justin from EmpireFlipper.com.

The idea intrigued me, but was not something I was planning
on doing for a while. Let’s be honest, I hardly have any experience with
websites. This blog is run by a free Blogspot account by google. Yes, I have a
little bit of experience…but not much. I’ve had this blog for about 3 years and
have been able to monetize it a little (although, that has never been the goal
of this blog). But, recently I decided to take a risk and purchase a website.

Here’s my experience purchasing a website

So I had been keeping an eye on the available websites every
once in a while and just recently I decided to take the plunge…and I bought my
first website. Definitely a nerve-racking experience. What if it goes bust?...it definitely could). What if there are problems that I don’t know how to fix with my limited
website knowledge?

Here are some of the potential problems that I thought of:

·Is the site a legitimate site?

·Is the current traffic and revenue verifiable?

·Is the revenue/traffic a temporary thing that
will soon decrease?

·Will running the website require too much time?

·Will running the website require too much
knowledge or expertise that I don’t have?

Criteria I set for my purchase:

Be able to afford the possibility of losing all
the money. Yes, it would devastate me if the website was not profitable or if
somehow I got scammed, but I understood that was a slight possibility. I was not
using money that I absolutely need. i.e. I wasn’t using emergency savings.

Website be at least 6 months old, preferable at
least 1 year. I figured the longer the website has been around, the more stable
it will be.

Some organic traffic. I wasn’t too comfortable
with traffic from paid advertisement.

No more than 1 hour/per week required to operate
the website. Ideally, I wanted a site that was basically on autopilot. I would
be okay wilh a little bit of time required to maintain the current levels of
income. I know this is possible, because my blog doesn’t really require any
time to maintain current revenue (if I stopped blogging, my blog would still
continue to make the same amount of money).

Purchase the site from a genuine person.This is hard to really know for sure, but I
wanted to be able to talk to the seller and get a feel for why he was selling
and who he/she was. I wrote down a list of questions and went over them when I Skyped with him.

Purchase a website that was no more than
$15,000. For me, this is actually a lot of money, but there are many sites that
sell for much more. If things go really well after my first purchase and if I
have some more available capital, I might consider a larger purchase down the
road.

New listing. I did not want to purchase a
website that had been listed for more than a week. My thought process was that
if it wasn’t sold by now, it must not be that attractive of a website.

When I was looking at the list of websites available on
EmpireFlipper.com, I found a site that matched my criteria. I decided to pursue
it further. I made my initial refundable deposit that gave me access to more
information about the website and I was allowed to set up a Skype call with the
seller to ask him more questions. I was the 5th person to put a
deposit on the website so I knew others were interested.You can actually make an offer to purchase
the website that is less than what is being asked, but the 1st
person that made a deposit on the site will have the opportunity to better your
offer. If you offer the full asking price, you will get the website. I offered
the full asking price because I was worried someone else would get it before
me. In hindsight, maybe it would have been wise to try offering a lower price.
Who knows though.

After I interviewed the seller I felt good about making the
purchase and went forward with it. EmpireFlipper support mediated the
transaction and transfer of the website. It took about 1 week for the complete
transfer.

One nice thing about the sale, was after the website
transfer is completed you can verify the traffic and revenue that is now under
your name. EmpireFlipper asked me to verify this. I think if the traffic or
revenue was not as expected, EmpireFlipper would not release the funds to the
seller until it was. Thankfully, the revenue and traffic was as expected.
Although, it is important to note that
if things go wrong with the website going forward, I would have full
responsibility.

Basically the site makes most of its revenue from generating
leads from people wanting to purchase forklifts. I get paid $23 for every
person that fills out a form on the website (feel free to visit and fill out
the formJ).
It also makes a small amount from Adsense ads.

My hope is that it will continue to make $400-$600 per month
and have my initial investment of $12,000 paid for in 2-3 years. If it takes
3-4 years to do this, I would still be okay with that.

I also don’t plan on making any changes to the site. It
doesn’t really have that great of an appearance, but I feel that if it’s
working okay right now, why change it? Sometimes trying to change something
that is working only makes problems. It shouldn’t really take any time for me
to run and is basically on autopilot.

Am I crazy to purchase a random website? Have any of you ever done
something like this? What are some nerve-racking investments you have made?